Mother-of-seven Mah Pari lives in a fertile region of Balochistan province - but her two-year-old son, Gul Mir, is crying from hunger as she cradles him in her arms. "All my babies were weak after they were born. Maybe it is because my breast milk is not good," she sighs.
In Pakistan, many mothers are told to feed their newborns tea, herbs or formula milk, one of the major factors behind a stunted growth rate in children of a staggering 44 percent.
"In our Balochi culture, we give battri, crushed herbs twice a day, morning and evening," says the distraught mother, whose eighth pregnancy was barely showing under her skillfully tailored yellow tunic.
"I also gave him tea and breast milk twice a day, in the morning and the evening," she adds - far less than WHO recommendations. Elsewhere in the country, babies are often fed ghee (clarified butter), honey or sugar cane. "I work all day at home, I don't have time to breast feed," says Mah Pari, who firmly believes that traditional concoctions are better than her own milk. Gul Mir, age two, registers just 5 kilogrammes on a weighing scale in a rural mobile feeding centre run by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Manju Shori. That is less than half the ideal weight for a toddler his age, while the average new-born in the West weighs 3.5kg - and his deprivation at such a critical stage is likely to have permanent consequences. 'It's a crisis' The situation is not limited to Balochistan, the poorest and least stable of country's four provinces.
The country's rate of growth stunting is among the highest in the world, according to UNICEF, because of a lethal mix of risk factors: bad nutrition, hygiene problems and unclean water, combined with a lack of education for mothers.
The consequences are permanent and disabling: limited height, incomplete brain development, and elevated risk of disease. It has a huge impact on the national level, reducing IQs and productivity of a large percentage of the population. It "is a crisis, it's a massive emergency," said Angela Kearney, head of UNICEF in country, emphasising that one the leading causes of malnutrition is the limited breastfeeding.
Only 38 percent of babies are fed breast milk exclusively during their first six months in line with the UN recommendations. This low figure is blamed on local traditions, the heavy workloads of mothers and powerful marketing by the milk industry.
Like many grandmothers, Razul looks after the children when her daughter-in-law is working at home or in the fields.
"The doctor told us to give the baby Number One milk," she says, referring to a brand marketed by Nestle. It was a disastrous decision for her granddaughter Akila: The water in feeding bottles is often unclean, and as families are poor, they use only one spoon of powder.
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